


skin to skin

by popunkarts



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, I wrote this for me but people seem to enjoy it, Married Life, Miscarriage, OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Peaky Blinders Imagines, Reader-Insert, this is just a coping mechanism at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28576257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popunkarts/pseuds/popunkarts
Summary: michael’s wife is dodging him while fretting over more than one loss.
Relationships: Michael Gray/Reader
Kudos: 14





	skin to skin

He had seen it in Polly first. The rituals, the lighting and blowing out candles, the tablets and the drinking to slow it all down. He was young when it happened the first time, right after his father passed. She was coping, he supposed now as he looked back, with the loss and the idea of two kids on her own added to her brother’s litter as extra being her responsibility. It had scared her and she needed control and peace any way she could get it. John and Arthur would take him out onto the lane when her fits would become worrisome, they would kick a ball around with him and the other neighborhood kids until Tommy came to get them, their Uncle Charlie having helped settle his mother with whiskey and a shouting match.

He understood the want of control, the craving for power over something too big for the palms of his hands.

He had no reason to think you’d be the same.

That night in the bar, your dress hugging your curves and glittering in the poor lighting of the pub, he had fallen head over heels. He hadn’t shown it—Isiah assumed it was lust and he was bringing you back to his apartment for stress relief that never failed him and would bring you back with a little blue glass vial of snow in your purse—but he had fallen swiftly and freely and wanted just you in that bar and everyone else out on the street.

It was a game of cat and mouse. You knew he was a Shelby, although he introduced himself as a Gray, and you knew any wrong move or sharp words could have you cut. You strung him along but Michael refused to relent, countering every one of your wise cracks with quick retorts of his own. Only when he took you out for a smoke, did you notice his freckles in the shining street light and his self assured smirk slipped into a boyish smile without his permission. You fell faster than you would have liked, in honesty.

Now, as he stood at the doorway of your shared bathroom, he listened to you whimper as you worked the soap in your hands up into a lather. He could smell the lavender and peppermint in the air the same way he smelt it on you when he would lift your hand to kiss your knuckles. 

“Are you nearly done?” 

You started at the sound of his voice, turning your head back for a brief moment before rinsing off your hands. 

“I didn’t know you were home.” You tugged the towel off the rack, rubbing the soft cotton over your painted fingernails first. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

Michael nodded, blowing a breath out through his nose slowly. “I thought you were in the bath.” 

“I had one earlier.”

“A soak to relax?” He hummed as you passed him by, your path to the vanity quick and with intention. “One of your lavish baths with hot water and bubbles like a child?”

“After all you put me through today I deserve one.” He watched your two fingers unscrew the cap to the small lotion bottle, capping the glass with your thumb before twisting your wrist, swirling the lotion. Four turns around and you pull your manicured thumb away, turning your hand over to spill out a thin line of product onto the back of it to the tip of your middle finger, a small line crossing over the back from right to left.

“Let me,”He offered abruptly, a hand reaching out for yours. “After all I put you through today, I could help you relax.” The way you only glanced up at him before shaking your head and rubbing your hands together stuck with him. 

“You’ll only smell like me. What businessman should smell like lavender?” You scolded quietly as you worked the lotion into your skin with your hands low close to your lap, paying special care to your knuckles. They had become tender with the heat of the water, the small splits over your knuckles and the sides of your palms surely burned with the product and the added attention from Michael.

“One that loves his wife.” He placed his hands on your shoulders as you worked the lotion in, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles, “A kept man.”

You laughed lightly and Michael felt the corner of his lips turn upward. “A kept man?”

“I’ve come back here night after night, I think that’s qualified me as kept if all else hasn’t.”

“A ring qualifies me as kept.” 

He stopped himself from rolling his eyes at your reminder, placing his hands on the vanity on each side of you, caging you in. The way your shoulders regained the tension he thought he pushed away made him want to question you, break apart every fear or stressor you had and throw them into the Cut, never to be seen again. 

“I’ve told you I’ll replace the ring as soon as I can find a jeweler who knows what he’s doing.” He tilted his head down slightly to rest his forehead against yours. “I won’t have you wearing a shit ring. Not from me, not my love. Even if you lost the first one like a teenager.” 

You closed your eyes—to avoid his gaze, he was sure of it, and took a deep breath. “I’m starting to think you don’t want me wearing a ring of yours again—”

“We took vows.” Michael’s voice was soft when he cut you off, his words were certain. “Every morning too. I love you, I tell you every morning, don’t I?”

“I’m never sure you’ll come home at night.” You muttered, turning your head away. “So you-”

“I promise you every morning.”He spoke softly as you did, moving to press his lips to yours. His lips met your cheek when you turned your head again but he took it in stride, placing delicate kisses from your cheek to your ear. “I will get you the ring. I just hope you don’t let this one slip off.”

Michael leaned back again, testing the waters and leaning forward to kiss you. He stopped as he felt your hip bump against his hand, lifting his hand from the wood of your vanity to let you slip away. Your hands stayed planted on your chest, your palms flat against your collar bones as you walked over to the window. He turned his head only slightly, pushing one of your perfume bottles out of the neat line they were arranged in. From the corner of his vision in the reflection of the mirror he watched you tilt your head to the side, wiping where he had placed kisses onto your skin away as if it soiled your skin.

The pretending stopped in that moment. “What was that?”

“What was what?” You sounded oblivious to his question, he noted the ways your fingers twitched against your skin, imagining you craved the water washing the little bit of him off of you as soon as he had touched you.

“You react to your own lies, my love.” His gaze did not waver, trying to persuade you to meet his eyes. “Don’t ever play cards with Isiah. It won’t end in your favor.”

Your eyes shifted from the window to his for a brief second and he quirked an eyebrow when you looked past him to analyze the perfumes again. “Don’t move my things, Michael. I’ve asked you a hundred times to leave them alone.”

“It’s just a bottle.” He pushed it back to its almost rightful position, although still slightly off from where you had it. 

“It was mine, I had it in the right place.” The sharpness to your tone made Michael brace himself, waiting to be pushed aside. 

Michael stood his ground as you marched over, your fingers etched with narrow slits where your skin had broken twisting the bottle back to its rightful place. “It shouldn’t bother you that terribly.”

“It was in its place, Michael.” Your fingers curled and uncurled around nothing and you brought your hands in front of you, making a steeple of your fingers and holding your wrists against your stomach, pressing into the softness there. 

Tentative, Michael reached his hands toward yours. He saw the beginnings of an objection, your eyebrows raising and your lips parting, he refused to hear it. He linked your fingers, pulling you close in front of him until your fronts were pressed together. He knew you wanted to squirm the way you always did when he looked at you closely “too fucking close to be normal” in your words, your toes wriggling against your stockings and jaw tensing as you stared at his eyebrows.

“I know every part of you.”

“Michael-”

“Every part. You think you’re still hiding things. Keep thinking that if it helps you, Y/N.” Michael’s hands came up to gently cup your face, holding you with the care he would use for Polly’s china. “But all of this, the constant washing, and the straightening and the picking at food only comes after big stuff. You never let me touch you after the big stuff. You haven’t let me kiss you in ages.”

“Talk to me, my love.” You bit your lips together and Michael’s thumb came down softly to push against your chin. “Talk to your husband, please.”

You cleared your throat once, twice, three times, and your voice still broke as you whispered to him. “I bled last week, Michael. It was heavy.”

Michael nodded once in almost understanding, knowing how your aversion then strong desire for his touch towards the beginning and end of your bleeding, especially the particularly bad ones. You tore your eyes from his and Michael ducked his head slightly to pull your gaze back to him. “That’s not it. What’s got you like this? What is it?”

“No.” You looked at him again and your eyes were wet with tears. “Polly-- your mum-”

“My mum caused this?” His eyebrows pulled together and he looked toward the ground, a thousand things running through his head at what Polly could have snapped at you with in a moment of misplaced rage. “What did she say?”

Your hands came up to hold his face this time, Michael’s dropping to your waist. Instinctively, he began to rub gentle lines down the marks he knew decorated your skin under the fabric of your slip. 

“My bleed wasn’t-” You choked on your words and Michael let you tuck yourself into his chest, his arms coming around to hold you to him. “It was a child, Michael. Polly told me I was with child.” Your words began to rush out as the blood in his veins ran cold. 

“I was with child, and then I wasn’t, and I couldn’t find a moment to tell you that I was or wasn’t and now-”

“It’s alright,” His hands stroked down your hair, stopping to play with the tight curls at the nape of your neck. “It’s alright, my love.”

“She said it was-”

“It’s not.” He forced the words out, bile stinging the back of his throat. “It’s gone now. It’s alright, just us. We’re alright, Y/N.”

“I just-I feel like I’m still dirty from it.” You whimpered, twisting your fingers at the knuckle with your thumb and forefinger. “I can’t get clean from it. If I can’t get clean from it, you might find another woman.”

“You weren’t dirty from anything.” He pressed his lips against the crown of your head as he spoke, doing his best to take in your scent. “You’ll never be dirty, my love.”

“She-she sai-”A hiccup cut you off and his hold tightened, bringing one of his hands down to find yours and bring it up to his chest while you stammered. “She said it was-was a b-boy. A son, M-Mi-Michael.”

He took a deep breath, squeezing your trembling hand as he did so. “We’ll have a son. We’ll have another son.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat, trying his best to blink back tears.

You pulled back, placing your trembling hands on either side of his face. He cupped the back of your head, pulling your forehead to his and shutting his eyes as the tears began to fall. His voice trembled as your hands did against his skin, “We’re alright, my love. We’re alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> pollyrepents.tumblr.com :)


End file.
